


WICKED GAME

by WhenIFindLoveAgain



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: 19th Century, Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Character Death, Crushes, Death, Desire, Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, England (Country), Established Relationship, F/F, Falling In Love, First Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Friendship/Love, Gothic, Implied Sexual Content, Lesbian Sex, Love, Love Confessions, Love at First Sight, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Nudity, Obsession, Partial Nudity, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Relationship, Romance, Romantic Angst, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Gestures, Romanticism, Secret Relationship, Sex, Sexual Content, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Victorian, Wealth, Widowed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:41:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25989901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIFindLoveAgain/pseuds/WhenIFindLoveAgain
Summary: Soonyoung, employed as a English language governess for foreign workers on a English estate in the 1850's, has a carefully constructed and hidden desire and obsession adapted over Kang Seulgi, the Lady Dowager widow of the brother of the Lord of the manor, as she involves herself in a psychological, sexual, emotional, romantic and intense affair with Sooyoung. A work in progress, so, it'd be best just to bookmark
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Kang Seulgi, Kang Seulgi/Park Sooyoung | Joy, Kim Yerim | Yeri/Son Seungwan | Wendy
Kudos: 16





	1. I NEVER THOUGHT I'D MEET SOMEBODY LIKE YOU

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be perfectly honest - one of my favourite films is "My Cousin Rachel" and I re-watched it the last evening, and, oh, I absolutely adore it. And, of course, helplessly, I can't stop thinking about it and certain scenes that I know I can make work with these sorts of matters :)

Sooyoung adjusted her hat, looking up through the window of the train at the passing Cornish countryside as the steam train chugged along, belching thick, white steamed smoke from it's front-most driving carriage. Sooyoung adjusted the window down a little bit, and, taking off one of her gloves, she put her fingertips out of the window and let the cool breeze flying past at the steady forty miles an hour they were going wash over her. She was accompanied by two of the staff from the new house she was going to; one of the senior employees, a man of mixed-Mediterranian descent with a hooked nose named M. Bottovelli, and combed back black hair in his early forties and a young woman with traditional English features and yellow-blonde hair like sennep booms, named Mary Olsen. Her bloom-yellow hair pinned back neatly and under a lavender-toned felt hat with little flower of the same fabric stitched on around the crown of the hat; Sooyoung quite admired that hat, actually.

"Beautiful weather." The older man commented good-naturedly, taking in Sooyoung's smile. "I'm sure you'll be quite happy at Longbourne, Miss."

"Yes, I'm sure I will be." Sooyoung smiled.

Sooyoung was been employed as translator and governess of Oriental language and literature; the estate where she was going to be employed for the next summer had been somewhat controversial by taking on a multicultural labouring force for the eight hundred acres of farm-land, orchards, and, extended forests that was owned in the coastal region, most of the non-Cornish labourers Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants that had come to live in a policy made by the current Tory government: instead of all new arrivals in Britain flocking to already crowded cities that were competing with overpopulation, pollution, tough work enviroment and a struggling economy, to spend the first two years of their new lives in the countryside to contribute to rural communities, and, have the countryside as their basis for settling into English life, away from the difficulties, and, usually, poverty of East-Asia.

Sooyoung was to teach English, help the farmhand managers and senior estate councilmen with day-to-day neogiations and work with the foreign labourers, and, oversee the library of the Lord and The Dowager Lady, those two individuals ultimately her employers outright.

The Dowager Lady Kang and the Lord Branwell were of no direct relation; Lady Kang had been the controversially-married wife of Lord Branwell's brother, who, at forty-five - older than his bride - had died due to complications involving a heart condition, and, in himself, a personality so belligerent he would not take the advice of his Doctor's and take his prescribed medication. Lady Kang now lived with Lord Branwell, who, had been older by his brother again, a good six years. To all accounts, Lord Branwell got on with the Dowager Lady Kang very well, which, was the other half of Sooyoung's employment.

Since the Dowager Lady Kang had come into his life, Lord Branwell was a keen collector of religious and commerical Oriental scriptures, novella, and, records of all sorts.

But he had no talent at Oriental languages and needed help to translate them to English, the only way he could read them as Lady Kang didn't have the patience to go through it with him and it seemed he did not have the desire to have her in his company for that sole purpose.

"Lord Branwell and The Dowager Lady Kang may not be indoors to first recieve you; they often take walks or go horse-riding in each other's company." The Mediterranian-man informed Sooyoung. 

An hour later, they arrived at a train station in the near-by village to the Longbourne Estate of Kitnor. The extroadinairy scent of the ocean air filled up Sooyoung's lungs as railway-station portmen carried their cases to the carriage, where, the driver sat up in his seat in suprerior control of gleaming black mares that Sooyoung admired appreciatively for a few moments before been assisted into the carriage with her wide skirts, and, the final length of her journey to the Longbourne Estate begun.

When she arrived, nearly every worker on the estate, it seemed, was present. As many as she could see, and, all of the different strains of ethnicities which Sooyoung, through her occupation, could just tell from sight; Irish, North Welsh, Scottish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Gemanic-descent and otherwise intensely Scandinavian. The smile on her face grew wider. She understood fully how lucky she was to have such a position in society at her youthful age, to not just be married off or otherwise in a state which she could not control. Sooyoung thanked silent within her being her Shaman Father and her temple-maiden Mother, who had clashed with the arrival of Christian-Missionaries violently when they had first arrived in Gyreonsang in Korea via international merchant trade, but, then, a peace had descended when her Father had saved the life of the Minister's wife when she had rode her horse along the edge of a crumbling mountain-top and had nearly fallen 1,200 feet to her instaneous death. It was how Sooyoung came to know English inside and out, and, come to live in England.

It was all high, prosperous hopes; a good life for her, contentment, wealth, position, happiness.

Everything a young woman could ever want.

Sooyoung was introduced to all of the workers, and, then, the senior farmhands, local council figures, leading Estate contractors, and, M. Bottovelli's female equal:

Mrs. Dalton.

She was a lined and rectangular face woman with deep, dark eyes and dark-brown hair that seemed to naturally curl despite the wax she lightly put across it to try and keep it smooth, put back into a low-arrangement at the back of her scalp in a black dress that wasn't without style even though it was quite practical in it's being.

"Miss Park." Mrs Dalton greeted her with a hand-shake and a nod of her head and a South-Welsh accent. "I trust you had a good trip, and, Anna will show you to your rooms."

Sooyoung began to wonder what was going on when she was lead up the entrance hall of the grand, eight-storey building made nearly all of locally-mined sandstone and then the grand staircase that lead to the grand bedrooms upstairs, that were definitely not meant for the servants and other employee's. 

Anna sung softly under her breath, not ignoring Sooyoung in any way, just in a cheerful mood, having had a trip up through the countryside to London, as she took Sooyoung through the hallways on the third floor.

"Why am I not down with you?" Sooyoung asked as Anna opened the door to a room down at the end of the hall where a arch-shaped window looked out east-wardly across the Estate, which, in this view, showed the extending and ancient forests that stood for miles and miles ahead, untouched since the days of the Norman conquering. A little table stood underneath with a vase full of tulips and a lace doilie. Sooyoung smiled. That had "a woman's touch" written all over it. No way on Earth would Lord Branwell come down and think, "Yes, a doilie would look quite pretty, yes, right at this spot, I should think..."

"Even though you are employed like the rest of us the Dowager Lady Kang has requested that you be put up here." Anna didn't seem put out at all as she introduced Sooyoung into her rooms. The bedroom had sixteen foot ceilings and cream carpet with blue wallpapered walls with white and pale pink flowers and green stems printed across it with a white ceiling; around the ceiling the cornices were patterned gracefully and old-wordly, and, a intricate plaster rosary hung from the ceiling above the floor with stained-glass kerosene lights, rose-gold in tint. The bed was made up in plain cream linen and was comfortably large with dark-stained walnut frame and oat-meal toned bed-curtains with a pattern of white flowers across them too. She had three rooms adjoined to that - a private bathroom of sorts, a sitting room, and, a dressing room - and the room was pleasently furnished.

Sooyoung thought Anna might have taken some offence to a foreigner but nonetheless as a employee like the rest of them been given such grand treatment. "You're so welcome here. I think she might be a bit lonely, the Lady Dowager; it's not really apprioate for her to get friendly with the workers - who are all men with families, most of them - so, I think she'll like been able to see a face that looks like hers at the breakfast table." Anna smiled wholesomely.

"The boys will bring up your luggage and I'll organize that for you while M. Bottovelli will take you down to the library, shortly. No doubt one of the poor workers has been chased down a field with a stockwhip and told to find the Lady Dowager Kang and Lord Branwell so they can see you." Anna walked across the room and opened up the window, making the oatmeal-toned curtains and the voile under-curtains flutter in the breeze that came in. "Now, I must go change before the boys see me and get their heart's all-a-flutter by a lavender dress." Anna beamed again at Sooyoung, her apple-like cheeks flushing peach in colour.

"Do I need to change?" Sooyoung looked down at her dress; it was long-sleeved with a fitted bodice and a low neck - without been scandolously low - with a hooped skirt; it was a white fabric with green leaves patterned across it. 

"No, you look perfect, love." Anna confirmed. "I'll be on my way. Don't worry, just relax; no one's going to come and bite you."

An hour later when Sooyoung was nearly going to sleep on the sofa in her private sitting room area when M. Bottovelli came to collect her to take her to the drawing room adjoined with the library so she could meet the Lady Dowager Kang and Lord Branwell.

The library was two stories tall with sweeping views across the south-facing landscape of the Estate; from this angle, the apple and pear fruit orchards filled up ones vision. It was a transcendent sight, and, the beauty of the library itself was just as profound. Richly-stained polished floorboards with Oriental rugs and lamps, beautiful dark furniture and bookcases that ran from floor to ceiling on all each four sides of the vast, vast space where the ceiling was decorated with a gold-painted wallpaper and the scent of fresh flowers - no doubt the Lady Dowager's doing - sat in clean, pretty china vases for the eyes to see.

The most tremendous sight was the sight of the Lord Branwell and Lady Dowager Kang.

Lord Branwell - in his early fifties as his age went - was dressed in impeccably tailored clothes. Beautiful leather shoes, dark trousers, a black jacket, a blue-and-cream-pin-striped waistcoat, a white calico short and a tie the same tone of blue as the stripe on his waistcoat. He had greying blonde hair and a round face with twinkling blue eyes, and, no facial hair to speak off. He was fattening - it was undeniable - but, not in a slobbish way. Simply in the way that men ageing older become. His eyebrows were thick and and grey with curiously thick eyelashes framing his blue eyes, and, a thin mouth in his round face. Lord Branwell was a kind-looking man, but, Sooyoung knew that he couldn't be a push-over to be in control of all that was.

His appearence much complimented the one of the Lady Dowager Kang, the contrast remarkable.

She was quite thin, but, her ethnically-old-blood features were stark; her eyes were some of the sharpest monolids Sooyoung had ever seen with a thin mouth; her cheekbones and jawline could cut you, they were so sharp and defined, and her hair was black with the same natural intensity as coal. She wore a English-style black dress with long-sleeves and a hooped skirt that fully covered every inch of her except her hand and her neck. The dress was by now means one of someone with lesser wealth and means than herself; there was a stiff black lace trim around the neck of her bodice which was paneled with cloth-covered buttons matching the dress fabric up the front with the thin trim of black lace around the sleeves of her wrists as well. Her hair was drawn up into a simple arrangement, and, she had a bracelet of pearls around one of her wrists, and, black-opal earrings in each earlobe.

She was absolutely beautiful.

"My Lord and Lady Dowager, Miss Park Sooyoung." M. Bottovelli introduced her with the formal grace becoming all senior servants, his voice deep and rich and thick.

"Thank you, Bottovelli." Lord Branwell stood up, straightening the hem of his waistcoat. M. Bottovelli retreated to stand by one of the exits from the library by the huge fireplace, which was set to the east-ward wall of the Library with the furntiure of the drawing room set before and around it, the rest of the space devoted to the library.

"Miss Park, lovely to meet you." Lord Branwell greeted her. He held a hand to one side and invited Seulgi to stand beside him. Sooyoung swallowed, trying not to be nervous in the sudden situation.

"Miss Park, how lovely to meet you. You employment is much welcomed for the needs of the Estate with our immigrant workers." The Lady Dowager talked to her in English, and, nodded her head to her. Sooyoung nearly fell over when Seulgi talked to her in Korean and said to her, "Please never address me as the Lady Dowager or Lady Kang as you are not one of these English-people; if you would call me Seulgi I would prefer it." 

Seulgi. The woman's name went over in Sooyoung's head. Seulgi.

Seulgi smiled. "Are you alright from your trip? You look pale."

"Excuse the term of phrase, but I've had a bit of a culture shock, my apologies." Sooyoung managed. Suddenly, Seulgi burst out laughing, her hands with pretty, clean, short nails raising to her mouth before falling down clasped again in front of her abdomen.

"My dear?" Lord Branwell remarked to her good-naturedly, not put out by the chatter of Korean and the conversation that he couldn't otherwise interpret. M. Bottovelli seemed to think the same, gazing over at Seulgi.

"I'm sorry, I forgot myself." Seulgi apologised to Lord Branwell, before, recovering her composure with a sudden coolness setting over her being; it made Sooyoung wonder which was more real. This cold composure all of the laughing, bright-eyed young woman of just before. Seulgi went to speak again, but, with one last look at Sooyoung, she promptly left the room, the door hurried to be opened for her by M. Bottovelli.

Lord Branwell blushed embarrassedly, and, even M. Bottovelli thick, dark eyebrows were raised.

"I'd say she's had a bit of a culture shock." He admitted, the dark blush seeping all over his face and neck.

Yes, herself and I, Sooyoung thought.

"Forgive her behaviour, she'll come around." Lord Branwell added. "She's been alone with a companion for quite a long time; having another face that looks like hers in her Library has ruined her nerves, I apologise."

Sooyoung couldn't quite believe that a English Lord was apologising to her.

It seemed Lord Branwell was made of better things than she had previously expected.

"Feel free to take a seat." He gestured to the sofa opposite his by the fireplace. "Now, down to business." He smiled kindly.

For two hours, Lord Branwell - with enough paperwork to fill a gardening wheel-barrow - took Sooyoung through her new employment. Sooyoung had expected some of the groundskeepers and those who looked after the workers to be in the room at the same time, but, Lord Branwell seemed keen to do it all himself, talking with her.

"Once again, I apologise for the disappearence of Lady Kang." He said to her at the end of their meeting once more. "Dinner will be at eight 'o' clock; there will both be English and Korean cuisine." Lord Branwell smiled.

"That must have been a shock for the cook." Sooyoung attempted some humor.

Lord Branwell chuckled. "Lady Kang prefers to cook her own food; so, when we will be having after-dinner drinks, she'll have her rice and vegetables, I should think." He explained. "I...I apologise, I was going to ask you something, but, it's just left my mind, I apologise."

"No matter, Lord Branwell." Sooyoung nodded her head. "Perhaps you'll remember it over dinner?"

"Yes." Lord Branwell nodded bashfully, but, smiled, clearly trying to keep on top of himself. Sooyoung smiled. She was becoming rather endeared to her new employer, but, then, she knew her Father would never have put her with unfit people. "Yes, I hope I do so."

At half-seven, Anna came to Sooyoung's room with Mrs. Dalton. Sooyoung had been sitting in her sitting room with the fire burning beneath the mantle, reading through letters that her Father had written for her over the trip to Britain and all the queer little things the British did. Most of them were very funny, and, she was smiling widely when she caught sight of Anna and Mrs. Dalton.

"Hello, Sooyoung, I'm sorry to disturb you, but, we have to get you ready now." Anna told her.

Sooyoung blinked. "For what?"

"Dinner." Anna looked between Sooyoung and Mrs. Dalton.

"Miss Park, you'll find yourself in the arrangement that you change into something else for Dinner." Mrs. Dalton explained. "Not all households like that of Longbourne expect this every single night or of all of their guests - though employed, you are treated as a guest in this house and not a servant - but, please do tell me Lord Branwell informed you that dinner tonight was going to be a rather large affair?" She seemed quite pale all of a sudden. So did Anna.

"Not a party?" Sooyoung checked. Anna shook her head.

"Lord Branwell's friends, family, and, other people that work within society and business with the Branwell family are going to be present at dinner tonight." Mrs. Dalton barely managed. She didn't look very well at all.

"I'll get started, Mrs. Dalton." Anna rushed to assure her.

"And pray God save us all." Mrs. Dalton closed her eyes briefly before leaving Sooyoung's rooms. Anna giggled as soon as Mrs. Dalton was gone.

"We're going to have to hurry about a bit, my love." Anna smiled happily. 

Another storey up from Sooyoung's rooms were the rooms of Seulgi.

Seulgi sat at the velvet-upholstered stool at her vanity table as her lady's maid, Joohyun, did her hair, and, two of the housemaids who were the sisters of the best Korean-immigrant workers, Yerim and Seungwan, ran coal-pans over the sheets of her bed to warm them up and then keep them warm for when she came up to bed later that night. Yerim and Seungkwan had been "romantically entwined" - to put it politely - for the past two-and-a-half, three years. Perhaps perverted, Seulgi held such a fascination with the two women and their relationship that she had somewhat be-friended them. 

"What is the new girl like, my lady?" Joohyun asked, massaging a cream into Seulgi's scalp and down her long black hair so it moisturized the hair and stopped it frizzing up and burning when the curling tongs were applied to it. 

"We are nearly building up a single-gender tribe..." Seulgi slowly answered, in a comfortable trance with Joohyun's fingertips massaging her scalp. "...all of these Oriental women on an English estate...Seulgi...Joohyun...Yerim...Seungwan..."

Yerim and Seungwan got themselves into a fit of giggles.

"Be quiet, you two." Joohyun said.

"No, don't scold them." Seulgi opened one of her eyes. "What's the reason for such humor, girls?"

"Um..." Seungwan beamed but looked over to Yerim who had to bear the brunt of it.

"Just the matter of a tribe with two lesbienne in it..." Yerim barely got the sentence out for Seungwan started up again. "That means you and Joohyun would be together."

Joohyun's hand stopped massaging Seulgi's scalp.

"Now, now, don't get angry." Seulgi remarked to Joohyun. "Just do my hair."

One storey below, Sooyoung was barely ready in time.

"Oh my goodness, oh my goodness..." Anna fluttered off the ground nearly with utter relief, having just finished getting Sooyoung ready for the evening.

Sooyoung wore a traditional hangbok dress made of dark red and grey wool instead of silks and satins and cottons that was traditional in Korea; her hangbok skirt was made of dark grey and her hangbok blouse was the cherry red colour that made Anna coo over it's vibrancy and the richness of the colour.

Only when she was sitting down at the table in the dining room did Sooyoung think wearing Hangbok was a bad idea. Around the table sat fifteen or so English people in various states of beauty, but, all in impeccable tailoring that made Sooyoung regret her decision even more. Seulgi wasn't wearing Hangbok, for one.

Sooyoung had only one measure of comfort.

She had wanted to put on her Father's Shaman runes and make-up, but, in what would be this Anglo-Christian household, that would have had her thrown out.

"Good evening, Miss Park." Lord Branwell greeted her. "Let me introduce you..."

All in all, was three of Lord Branwell's closest friends, two daughters and a son to the first friend, three sons to the second friend, and a son and daughter to the third friend of the Lord's. Then there was the family solicitor with his wife and daughter, and, then, the oldest person in the room. Lord Branwell's Mother and Seulgi's mother-in-law before her husband's death. The woman was easily in her eighties and wore a dark purple dress, made of a much older style, but, nevertheless what looked more comfortable than the current fashion. It was a empire-waisted and buttoned velvet dress with long-sleeves and, then, a black-wool scarf-blouse fitted over her neck and chest.

Her eyes watery with age and under-eye sags looked at Sooyoung with a kind of nature that could be describe with one perfect phrase: "I don't know what you are, but you are not the same as I."

No, I am not, Sooyoung thought to herself.

She glanced up the table to Seulgi, who sat beside Lord Branwell on his right side while his Mother was sat on his left side. Seulgi was wearing a red-velvet even dress which came off of her shoulders and was sleeveless with a cinched-in waist and a skirt with a small train on the floor. Her opal-earrings were replaced by pearls, and, the bracelet around her wrist was gone. Instead, she wore a sterling-silver and ruby wedding ring, worn on the ring finger of her left hand instead of her right.

Sooyoung wondered if Seulgi did this specifically because her former Mother-in-Law was present. 

Everyone talked in some manner to Sooyoung, and, she wasn't left feeling excluded in the room nearly entirely full of English-people. Seulgi did not say a word to her throughout the entire meal. At the end of it, Lord Branwell proposed and then gave a toast to a blushing and contented and surprised Sooyoung, and, all the while, a part of her chest was pleased to see that Seulgi did toast her, even if there was something off about it.

Sooyoung didn't nessecarily interperate Suelgi's behaviour towards her as negative, as rude, as un-kind.

Sooyoung thought Seulgi was vulnerable, and probably had been since the day she met her husband, a Englishman, and married him, then coming to his home.

Sooyoung had a feeling that Seulgi didn't take well to change.

But, there was nothing she could do about that without afflicting herself.

At the end of the evening when everyone had retired or had been taken back to their nearby homes in their horse-drawn carriages, Sooyoung was disappointed to find she wasn't in the least bit tired. She had a big day tomorrow, and, it was late enough as it was. Tomorrow, her employment duties would well and truly begin, and, in all honesty, she hadn't completely understood how profound they were until the meeting that afternoon with Lord Branwell.

Even though she knew she should have had better manners than to do so, Sooyoung spent some time wandering about the manor home, and, in doing so, stumbled across a sight that Sooyoung clearly felt scorch itself across the surface of her brain, never to be un-seen, never to be forgotten.

It was definitely Seulgi - definitely her dress - walking slowly in a dream-like stroll across one of the courtyard gardens that lead out from the music rooms, a black shawl wrapped around her torso, chest, shoulders, arms, and head, as soft, misty rain began to fall down from the dark night sky.

She seemed so beautiful, looked so beautiful.

Sooyoung temporarily lost herself, standing in the open doorway of the music rooms, before moving in unto the space. Her fingertips brushed over the ivory keys of a grand piano, all the while her gaze and conciousness fixed on the sight before her, the French-doors opening out to gardens and the courtyard and then the extended property of Longbourne from the Westwardly side like a call of freedom for Sooyoung.

Sooyoung's breath hitched as Seulgi turned around, and, though tens of meters ahead, saw Sooyoung in her hanbok standing by the piano in the music room. Curses of regret and shame and panic flooded through Sooyoung's clarity-reasoned mind as Seulgi turned and walked back towards her, un-hurrying, graceful, spirit-like.

Soon, Seulgi stood at the entrance to the music rooms, between the French doors.

"Can you play?" Seulgi asked in reference to the piano which Sooyoung stood by, talking in Korean.

"No, I'm sorry, I can't." Sooyoung answered.

"Don't apologise." Seulgi shook her head, and, she came indoors, shutting the French doors behind her, before sitting down on the couple of sofas amongst armchairs that furnished the rooms.

Sooyoung gazed at Seulgi, waiting for Seulgi to say something more, but, nothing really came.

"Have I been a disappointment to you?" Sooyoung asked. Seulgi looked at her.

"Why do you think such a thing?" Seulgi asked.

"I know it's only the first day - my first day here - but, you don't seem to like me very much." Sooyoung told Seulgi honestly.

Seulgi gazed at her. "You're a shock to me." She said. "I don't know what to make of you."

"I'm all made of good things." Sooyoung told her.

Seulgi's mouth nearly quirked up at the corners, but, something stopped her. "No one's made up of just good things."

"Perhaps I shall be the first you encounter then." Sooyoung answered.

Seulgi went silent for a long time. She simply sat on the edge of the sofa's seats, and, Sooyoung stood by the piano. "I never dreamed that I'd meet someody like you." Seulgi confessed.

Sooyoung looked at her.

"I never though I'd meet somebody like you, either." Sooyoung told her.


	2. WE COME CLOSE TO THE STARS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soonyoung accidentally shoots her mouth off to Seulgi when she is far too tired to think; Seulgi's twenty-sixth birthday comes around with a fairly significant celebration, Soonyoung messes around with some of the Korean workers and has a Sham ritual in the forests surrounding Longbourne Manor, and, Sooyoung and Seulgi have their first kiss as it rains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small rant here; I am sick to death of goody two shoes gay hipsters with mental disabilities commenting on my work and saying that I'm a degenerate and offensive human being for using the term "retard". Firstly, to all you cunts, get a fucking grip on the real world and how real human beings communicate. The context of the event in the work where this took place, the moron of the story thinks someone said a major character of the work is a paedophile rather than a Pluviophile (someone who likes the rain). The sentence then been, "I said Pluviophile, you retard". So, any one of you cunts that wastes my time with moronic spiking like that will have a new arsehole torn into them; thank goodness this wasn't real life for them, because, I would have smacked them and I'm not fucking joking. I'm a naturalism author! These fucking cunts! I write about the real world and the behaviour of human beings for a living and some gay hipster cunt with a mental disorder of some sort chooses to humiliate themselves. Wouldn't that be right?

Sooyoung was up bright and early the next morning, and, she wore a hanbok dress again, and, no one seemed to mind. Sooyoung was secretly pleased like this. Corsets, hoop skirts, numerous petticoats, stockings, garters, and under-belts weren't exactly her favourite form of clothing to cope with throughout the day.

She rushed around filling out basic instruction forms for the days tasks into Korean for the workers, and, worked as a translator several times for workers in disputes with one another or loose monolidded-eye children found wandering around in cloth nappies by the Anglo workers who didn't know how to ask, "Whose little one is this and why is she or he out of the bloody house, you dumb slope cunt?"

Sooyoung had refrained from adding the remark at the end when she was translating. The irony was, even though she was there to officially teach languages and other communications, everyone had figured out a unorthodox way of communication through hums, hand signals, stamping feet, sounds akin to pagan calls, and, generally just barking and swearing at each other like animals.

Sooyoung wasn't scared of it, having grown up in a background as wild as this, but, she could tell that some of the male workers themselves got unnerved by the behaviours of their desperate fellow Anglo workers trying to get jobs done with the Oriental immigrants.

Sooyoung taught eight different English/Korean, English/Mandarin classes that day, and, by dinner-time, she was too tired to attend it. She went straight up to her rooms with apologies sent down to Lord Branwell and Seulgi via a alarmed M. Bottovelli and went straight into a deep, dreamless sleep. As Sooyoung quickly went to sleep, she had thought that no one who stayed as a guest in Longbourne Manor under M. Bottovelli's thirty-odd years in service had worked so hard to be that worn out.

Aristocrats didn't life a bloody finger.

Sooyoung half stirred awake sometime in the middle of the night, becuase, through her eyelids, she had noticed a warm orange glow, and, the sound of footsteps.

She was also desperately thirsty. Her throat felt like drought-scarred, erroding ground. Even her mouth was dry. It was a horrible feeling.

Sooyoung, who had gone to sleep on her front with her hair still up in it's pins and her shoes on, turned on her side and nearly screeched out of fright to see Seulgi sitting on the chaise-lounge by the base of Sooyoung's bed in the same black dress she had worn the day before, but, this time, emerald earrings in her ears instead of pearls or black opals.

The only reason Sooyoung didn't kick up a fuss was her throat and mouth in their parched conditions.

"Suelgi." She managed, half leaning up on her elbows.

Seulgi blinked imperiously. "What's the matter?"

"Going to pass away if I don't drink something..." Sooyoung mumbled drily, wheezing out a breath as she tried to get up from the bed in her still quite letheragic state. She went through to the sitting room where there was a bottle of water from memory, and, even though the water wasn't fresh and cold anymore, Sooyoung sculled it.

"Oh, I see. That is what you meant." Seulgi remarked, watching the affair from her seat on the chaise lounge. Her nose wrinkled as Sooyoung wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. "That's awfully common." She commented of the action.

"Oh, like you weren't once upon a time, bitch." Sooyoung too-harshly remarked as she came back into her bedroom. She laid back down on her bed, and, she didn't understand why Seulgi seemed so breathless and speechless but obviously agrieved all of a sudden.

"What?" Sooyoung said. "What is it?"

Seulgi hastily gathered her skirts together and left Sooyoung's rooms. Sooyoung watched her go, and, then, fully clothed, she slipped beneath the thick, warm covers of her bed.

"She can fuck off..." Sooyoung mumbled in a far more dreadfully common way to herself before going back into a deep, peaceful sleep until half-seven the next morning.

"Is something happening, Anna?" Sooyoung asked. Anna had made a bath for her, carting up hot water in huge metal boxes and then letting it cool down into the copper tub so Sooyoung could have a warm cleanse and not get scalded simultaneously. Through the window she could see the farm and estate managers, labourers, fruit-pickers, farmers, managers, farmhands, and, the Manor staff rushing about, giving their labours to the organization of some sort of event.

"Oh, it's the Lady Dowager Kang's twenty-sixth birthday tomorrow." Anna explained. She sat on a wooden chair by Sooyoung's bath, having used it to fill up the bath and wait, but, while Sooyoung was in there and wanting to have a conversation, she sat there again. Anna wouldn't have done this with any of the other maids she worked with, but, there had been rumors about how this new lady coming to stay at the house came from a very different world from them. Anna didn't directly look at Sooyoung's body, but, there was enough soap in the water for it to be marble-like in it's lack of clarity over her bare flesh.

"Oh, is it some sort of party?" Sooyoung added to her former question.

"Yes, yes, big affair." Anna confirmed. "A sort of day off for everyone. Tea in the gardens in the morning, game of cricket at lunch, rugby in the evening, then, a sort of ball at the nighttime. Lord Branwell likes to make a fuss over the Lady Dowager on special occasions; one, she's young enough to be his daughter, and, two, apart from him, there's no one else in the world that gives two figs about her." Anna smiled sadly.

Soonyoung slipped beneath the surface of the bath water and didn't come back until Anna started screaming and forcefully pulled her up, a hand under each arm-pit and swearing about the Christian God.

"Oh, I'm fine, I can hold my breath for ages -" Sooyoung began, but, Anna wasn't having a pick of it.

"Sod off!" Anna smacked her around the head before leaving the bathroom and shouting that Sooyoung could call her back after she's head a cup of tea and a apple.

Sooyoung grinned to herself.

Blessed be the automatic panicking virtues of Victorian English-women.

Sooyoung was brought in to help with the organizing of Seulgi's birthday affairs. She wrore out Mandarin and Korean transcipts of instruction forms; mowing and raking the grass down on the East-side of the Manor for the cricket and rugby games, erecting the marquee for the tea party in the morning and 

"Is this usual in England?" Sooyoung asked the estate manager of the apple and pear orchards. 

"Oh, all the people and sorts like Lord Branwell have affairs like this for all of their friends, but, birthdays generally aren't held with such an affair." The North-Welshman, Eirwen, told her. He was incredibly large - well over six foot - but with his square-round face and dark skin and dark hair and dark eyes, he almost had the appearence of a teddy bear though Sooyoung knew that there were other characteristics that would come from this man because of his race. They watched the Oriental workers climb skillfully up into the trees to pick the highest fruits while some of the Anglo and Cornish workers stood below with tows and wooden-crate baskets to carry the fruit in afterwards to the harvesting barns. "Honour dates - first birthday, sixteenth birthday, twenty-first birthday, fiftieth birthday - yeah, a bit of a fuss. No one sees it as a bad thing; they've got more money than God to throw around, and, I don't mean that degradedly. The Lady Dowager's birthday is like a bit of day off for all us men; game of cricket and rugby with the village - Kitnor - all the girls mingle and have a dance and every old biddy comes up with their cake and jam." Eirwen smiled a bit. "You fancy one o' em, me merch?" He pointed across at the orchards.

"Mer...?" Sooyoung looked up at the towering giant.

"Speaking me own tongue to you, sorry, girl." Eirwen began to walk down into the orchards. "Hey, come with me." He called over his shoulder, waving a hand. Sooyoung picked up her skirts and jogged to meet up with him. They stopped by one of the fruit-picking trees, and, Eirwen said something to the fruit-pickers.

Eirwen pulled a dark red apple from the crate that a skinny boy with a sweet face and ginger hair carried, polished it on her shirt, and gave it to Sooyoung. She giggled before taking a bite of it. The snap and firmness of the apple was pleasant before sweet juice of the fruit filled up her mouth.

"Because we're by the sea they be growin' like that." Eirwen let his tongue slip a bit, not sounding quite so proper-mannered in his speech. He smiled down at Sooyoung.

Sooyoung thought she quite like Eirwen and his orchards.

Before she could even think, Seulgi's birthday had come around.

The day was warm, with clear blue skies and sunshine. Morning dew dripped off the tips of the Slavic Pine trees and along the faces of the roses planted in the courtyard gardens. The scent of freshly mowed grass filled up the air along with people's perfumes, washing powder, shoe polish, morning nature, baking, other cooking, and cigarette smoke. A sort of day off for everyone, Sooyoung remembered Anna describing it. Tea in the gardens in the morning, game of cricket at lunch, rugby in the evening, then, a sort of ball at the nighttime. 

Sooyoung wore what she thought was a nicer hanbok of her's but not one to make people fall over.

She'd save that until the evening.

It was of a pale cream silk with green willow leaves and pink, brown and gold robin birds in flight embroidered all over it. Sooyoung wore her slip-on flats instead of the lace-up heeled boots, and, as she always did her her hanbok, she didn't wear any jewelry, hats, or gloves.

She did wear a little bit of make-up, and, she did do her hair. She piled up the long hair and intertwined it into a braided and piled bouffant of sorts held in place with decorated clips and combs at the back of her head, and, wore light brown colour padded around her eyes by her fingertips and the most minimal, lightest shade of cream-pink colour across her lips. She didn't want to shock anyone to have a fit and take on then ill health.

Sooyoung didn't wear any of her Father's Shaman runes.

Upon entry into the East-facing gardens, Sooyoung saw that some of the boys were already in their cricketing whites, and, what seemed to be the whole of the Kitnor village with the Longbourne Manor and Estate staff plus people who could only be known and present by and due to Lord Branwell were already out in the sunshine and sipping not-quite translucent drinks out of crystal glasses. Sooyoung broadly grinned when she caught sight of Eirwen.

It was impossible to not catch sight of him.

His thick black hair was combed hair and he was covered in blue painted runes, a shirt that was quiet button up all the way, a leather waistcoat, his trousers, and, bare feet. 

Sooyoung flew over to see him. 

"So this is what non-Christians look like in England!" She exclaimed excitedly.

He winked down at her. "Cymry." He whispered, a word sounding like cay-mru. "Wales. Homeland, love."

"Is Lord Branwell going to get upset?" She gestured to his being. Eirwen shrugged.

"I shouldn't think so unless he's lost his wits and he's forgotten that I saved the farms on his Estate, and, I saved the..." Eirwen stopped speaking. He looked down to Sooyoung, wondering if he should tell her or not. Sooyoung shrunk a bit under his gaze. It was intense and animalistic and cold, but, suddenly, he changed again, back to the Eirwen Sooyoung knew. "The Lady Dowager was very sick for a year and a half when she first came. Lord Branwell had all these physicians in, bleeding her and making her drink tar. Their idea of medicine nearly finished her off all on it's own. I looked after her with medicine back from the homeland, made her strong again. Took a fucking long time...mind me language, love." Eirwen rubbed the back of his neck.

Sooyoung touched his shoulder. "I don't think anyone could ever see that as a bad thing if they were sane." She told him. "Let's get a cup of tea."

But, only a few moments later, all those plans were dashed. The Lady Dowager herself had come down from the Manor to the tea-party, and, from there, the day well and truly started. Sooyoung couldn't take her eyes off of Seulgi. A sudden rush of emotion flooded in through her system, seeing Seulgi on Lord Branwell's arm, Eirwen saying about her illness when she had first arrived in England, the memory of the two of them in the music rooms.

I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you.

"Are you married Eirwen?" Sooyoung held onto Eirwen's muscled arm as they walked across the grass to get themselves a form of breakfast and tea, nothing having been formally served that morning with the day ahead. Across the lawn, Seulgi was wearing a hanbok dress that colour of a tea-rose with cream details along the rolled-sleeves and the lapels of the blouse with black slip-ons, and, her hair in a beautifully arranged chignon at the back of her neck. Sooyoung noticed that Suelgi didn't really give into English fashions. Sooyoung was quietly delighted. 

Seulgi would lookd ridiculous otherwise.

"Yeah, but we came to not like each other after our son was born. We were only fifteen years of age - both of us - when William was born. We both hung it out until we were twenty-five and then she moved to Sussex and, then, it were just me and me lad." Eirwen answered shortly, breaking Sooyoung away from her thoughts. He seemed to glare across the lawn to Seulgi, Sooyoung's direct line of sight. "I'd say that's new." He remarked of Seulgi's hanbok. "She must have got her ladies maid to make it. You're not the only Oriental girl inside the Manor with the Lady Dowager. She has a ladies maid named Joohyun, and, there's two housemaids who are the sisters of one of the cattle runners and then the sister of one of my lads in the orchards; Seungwan and Yerim." 

"I didn't know that." Sooyoung said.

"Well, you do now." Eirwen collected a little china plate for Sooyoung, and, she smiled. It looked pathetically fragile in his large, dark-skinned, dark-haired hands. "There's Oriental food on the other table if you'd like that." Eirwen pointed out for her. "I'll see if there's a steak lying around..." 

Sooyoung laughed softly. "You truly brighten my day up." She told Eirwen. Eirwen smiled a little bit, and, then, he left her in peace, or, what he presumed was so.

It simply left Sooyoung caught in a matter of self control, along with a bid of trying not to gaze too much at Seulgi. Neither aims seemed very realistic at all giving her current internal feelings, which, in the society of England, would have caused fits for the population all around.

A deep, visceral warmth filled up Sooyoung's body, stepping into her skin before jumping into the depths of the marrow of her bones.

This didn't concern her. She came from a different world where people were different humans and they lived different lives. 

But Sooyoung knew that England was precisely the place where she had to leave all of that behind.

But she could not.

She knew she could not.

Suelgi looked to perfect, looking like one of her own kind, as she was. Seulgi's hanbok was something of a testament, a statement to Sooyoung. 

Sitting down on a wooden bench beneath one of the Slavic pine trees, Sooyoung drank iced lemon water, the cubes of frozen water tinkling about as they moved against the crystal of the glass. The lemon was sweet, a different type of lemon to what was usually constituted as the fruit. Everyone, truly everyone, was gathered around at this party; all of the workers of all their ethnicities, with their families; parents, grandparents, wives, husbands, children, grandchildren. Everyone seemed happy, involved in some way.

How strange this would be, Sooyoung thought. If the rest of your countrymen were around

Sooyoung knew, even when she lived back in Korea, that England was carved up in territories that had invisible lines and boundaries all around them. Though a United Kingdom, Scotland and it's people were their own, Wales and it's people were their own - even though they had a civil war with England every twenty years it seemed - the North English were considered their own sort by the city-living folk, and, well, the Cornish truly were their own set up as well. The Cornish appeared to get on well with the Welsh, be barely civil with the Scottish, but, really have a fight to hold with the English and otherwise Anglo populations.

It was extroadinairy that in one little village and one aristocratic Estate provided enough content, material, and other insight to write a naturalist study on.

Over the course of the day, there were some failures, and, some terrific winnings.

It was hilarious at the cricket when it begun to see the Oriental workers - most barely above five foot three - standing beside the mostly six-foot-tall cricket players. Most of the cricket whites that the Anglo workers offered to lend the Oriental workers did not fit them in any way shape or form, so, many of them wore their traditional hanfu and hanbok with their work boots. Even the caps didn't fit their heads, sliding down to cover their monolidded eyes. The cricket players from the village, Kitnor, fisherman and tailors, sailors and carpenters, all thought that this was incredible. Never before had a cricket match in English history been played quite like this, one half of the opposition in essentially what the Anglo workers took as "frocks". Many of the Oriental workers had traditionally long hair, and, the sight of them fixing their hair back into the qu's the Chinese men wore, the bun on top of the heads of the Koran men, and, the Japanese men borrowing pins from their wives and the wives of the Anglo workers had everyone in hysterics that came from a good place, not a degrading one.

The villagers won the cricket, but, when it came time for the Rugby in the evening, no Anglo or Oriental or Scandinavian workers were on the Longbourne Estate Rugby team:

The only workers on that team were the Welsh ones, decked out in their pagan runes with a murderous and pride glint in their dark eyes, the team headed up by Eirwen who was a force to be reckoned with.

The irony was this time, the only people that made up the Village team were the Anglo workers.

The Cornish and the Scots were well on the Welsh side. 

Sooyoung's chest nearly burnt her so fiercely when she glanced up from her seat in the spectator-area on the side of the pitch to see Seulgi grinned broadly, evidently in a very happy mood.

Sooyoung had not seen Seulgi smile in such a way before.

It made her feel absolutely dizzy. 

Sooyoung got a case of the giggles when the Welsh rugby team started up a war chant in their native language, and, the Village team nearly shat themselves out of fright, along with a lot of Lord Branwell's Aristocratic company, all uptight and snobby and unintelligent women with ostentatious clothes that looked down their nose at Seulgi with her dark skin and hair and monolidded eyes. Sooyoung thought they deserved to have their nerves take a battering in this way, especially when Seulgi leapt up from her seat and yelled out, "TAKE BACK THE HONOUR OF LONGBOURNE ESTATE, DRAGONS!"

Like the lions released from the cage in a Roman gladitorial stadium, the Welsh workers rushed forward and tackled the Anglo Village players so hard that they flew for an extroadinairy number of feet before been dug into a skidded landing on the ground. Sooyoung couldn't quite believe what she was seeing; yes, she had heard of Rugby, but, never in conditions like this.

She never realized it could be like this.\par  
And, whatever it was about it, Sooyoung thought that it wasn't quite right that the Welsh seemed to always have the ball while the Anglo worker's had to virtually dig their friends from the ground after been tackled.

"Is it meant to be this rough?" Sooyoung asked Lord Branwell's first of his closest friends, a Lord Glen.

"Oh, yes, dear." Lord Glen replied, a curious looking but handsome man. He had hair that receded slightly by the temples with a square face, hooded, sharp blue eyes, a pale complexion, a smooth forehead, and, stubble across his cheeks. He was slightly younger than Lord Branwell, and, even though he was married and had children, Sooyoung constantly saw women of all sorts batting their eyelashes at him. "I'm quite amazed to not see any blood by this point in time; maybe there's some caution for ther nerves of the ladies spectating today."

Sooyoung laughed incredulously. "Thank Goodness none of my kind are playing." She said. Lord Glen peered at her. "We would have been thrown over the roof of the Manor by now."

Lord Glen chuckled appreciatevly, and, rested a hand on her knee. Sooyoung looked down at it.

Now, this was something she was having trouble with.

Because the Longbourne Estate and it's company were split up into seven different races that all behaved different, did Lord Glen intend that like kindly but animalistic Eirwen would, or, did he mean it like that dreadful Lord Byron, a famous poet that Sooyoung had heard scathing reports of from Lord Branwell's Mother at the dinner on the first evening she spent at the Longbourne Estate. "Filthy cretin." Lord Branwell's Mother had abused the man to everyone's shock, but, Suelgi's apparent delight. "Gets a underage girl in the family way out of wedlock and then doesn't shed a tear when the child dies from pneumonia and then tries to seduce my maid and companion Cassandra when we were in London at the last season because my Goddaughter Adaline was presenting."

Sooyoung got up from her seat, Lord Glen's hand falling away from her knee, and, cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted out directly to Eirwen as he got one of the villagers in a headlock: "KICK HIM IN HIS GENITALS, EIRWEN!"

And, with that, Sooyoung recieved an icy look from Seulgi, a flabbergasted one from Lord Branwell, horrified ones from the Aristocratic ladies, but, otherwise, every single person around, even some of the rugby players, nearly pissed themselves laughing.

Finally, it was time for the evening ball.

Again, the Welsh workers put on their best displays, been the musicians and the bands for the evening for the two seperate dances; inside the ballroom of the manor was the evening ball for those who owned land of more than five hundred acres and had more than ten-thousand pounds in the bank, while, outside in the courtyard gardens, was the aptly termed "country ball" for those who did not have more than five-hundred acres of privately owned land and over ten-thousand pounds in the bank.

Or, more bluntly, the ball for the Aristocrats, and the ball for the paupers. 

Sooyoung spent some time in both balls, and, to be perfectly honest, she was more happy out in the country ball with the workers and their Pagan dancing rather than the Aristocrats with their stiff waltzes and their coolness when approaching a dance, as though it was a task, rather than a pleasure. 

Sooyoung first spent time indoors at the Manor's ball. The kerosene lamps and the candelights doused the room in a beautiful, soft-focus golden light, making the jewels around the ladies throats and hair and ears twinkle and glow, illuminated and fiery. It hid imperfections of skin and of figures, and, instead, caught the shine in the grain of the hair of the Aristocrats and their eyes, some more glazed than others, the glaze in some contributed to alcohol, the glaze in other's contributed to happiness. Yes, Sooyoung thought. I hope there's someone that falls in love on this day, this night. Yes. It's precisely the day, the night, for someone happy to fall in love

Sooyoung sipped a glass of wine, and, didn't feel to hurt when nobody asked her to dance. She wasn't an Aristocrat, she wasn't Anglo-Saxon. She wasn't in a costume constructed from steel corsets and finely sewn darted fabric, all down by hand. She was wearing Hanbok.

Sooyoung knew that, of all the women in the room, she was by far the most beautiful, but, that would never be taken into account. Her skin wasn't white, her hair wasn't blonde.

I think you should dance with Eirwen, Sooyoung thought, as she saw Seulgi dancing with Lord Branwell, then Lord Glen, then Lord Branwell's other friends, before, she retired to sit and drink, gazing out at the country ball. Her eyes stayed gazing at Seulgi for a few, long moments.There was almost a plead within Sooyoung for Seulgi to suddenly be naked, to reveal herself, show herself. But, not a nudity in physicality.

A nudity of her soul. Of her brain. Of all her thoughts.

"Would you like to dance with me?" Lord Glen asked Sooyoung, wearing a dashing set of tails with a high-collared shirt and immaculetely knotted tie, holding out his hand to her.

"Have you danced with your wife?" Sooyoung asked. Lord Glen smiled, and, there was nothing untoward about it. He looked like a little boy caught thinking of a happy joke, a memory. What are you smiling about? Would be the question, and, the twinkle in Lord Glen's eye and his pinched, cheeky, happy smile made just that for Sooyoung. "You haven't, have you?" She remarked.

Lord Glen gave a small "No." in answer.

Sooyoung chuckled. "Well, I suggest you find her and do that, then." She informed him. 

"Ah, yes, but I'll carry the air only a woman with her intuition can sense of a dog with his tail between his legs." Lord Glen said.

"If my wife dancing with a young woman before me I should be quite unhappy." Sooyoung said. 

Lord Glen sighed, and, lifting his trousers a few centimeters by the thigh before taking a seat beside Sooyoung to one side of the ballroom, he regarded her. "Do you think I really should?" He asked.

Sooyoung nodded confidently. "You'll be breaking her heart even more by sitting here talking with me. I'm beautiful and I'm young, and you do realize that she is aware that she loses a little bit more of what she had - youth and beauty - everytime she looks in the mirror to clean her faces each evening and morn?"

Lord Glen gazed at her. "You are a very intelligent woman, Miss Park." He said to her, before touching her knee again, and, rising to go and find his wife.

I'll make good men of all of you yet, Sooyoung thought of the Aristocratic men that surrounded her and played a part in her life here at Longbourne Manor. You wait and see. I'm going to be here for a very long time, yet

Sooyoung soon left the Longbourne Manor ballrom, going through the French doors and out to the country ball. She was approached by the ginger-haired lad from the Orchards the previous day.

"'Scuse me, Miss Park, but, some of your Chinky lads are looking for you." He told her. "Want to do somethin' but don't 'ave the English for it."

"Thank you very much." Sooyoung replied. "What's your name?"

He smiled a bit. "Danny Holcroft, Miss." He told her.

"Do you always work with the man that was up the tree yesterday?" Sooyoung asked.

"Yeah, we tend to work in pairs, not out of rules, just how we do things, Miss." Danny shrugged slightly, a little bit embarrassed. Sooyoung smiled. 

"And what's his name?" She asked.

"Zhixu." Danny said. "But you won't often hear me called that, Miss. Everyone calls him Mrs. H so if you ever hear Eirwen - sorry, M. Jones - saying about that...uh, that's it."

"Mrs. H?" Sooyoung echoed. This time, Danny really did blush, his face going redder than his hair.

"Zhixu has no family or wife or kids or anything, and, he lives with me in a little cottage we rent on the Estate, but, everyone calls him Mrs. H - Mrs. Holcroft - because he's the only one out of the two of us who can cook, he does the laundry, keeps the house tidy, grows the garden, has long hair, and usually wears his Hanfu, which, well, looks a bit like a frock here in Cornwall." Danny mumbled, scuffing the toe of his boot into the ground. Sooyoung thought that Danny wouldn't have said any of this except for the fact that she sat in a higher position than a farmhand and was on good terms with Eirwen. Sooyoung burst out laughing. Danny looked at her.

"Oh, I apologise." Sooyoung clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes crinkled up at the corners. "But, that's actually quite funny." She grinned at Danny. "Can you show me how to dance like that?" She pointed to the crowd of servants, workers, and villagers, making their own fun and much more of it than the Aristocrats indoors. "You're quite the envy." She held out her hands. 

"If you like, Miss." Danny took her hands and took her down to the ball.

She danced with Danny and a few others for a good hour before she was approached by a tall and handsome Chinese man. He was skinny and almost doll-like with wide-set dark eyes, a oval face that was a bit effiminate, even by Oriental standards. He smelt nice, not all sweat and alcohol, and he wore a dark blue hanfu changsan. 

"Hey, Mrs. H!" A few of the workers shouted out. 

Zhixu yelled some abuse back at them. He then talked to Sooyoung in Shanghaiese Mandarin. "Miss Park, good evening. We - our kind - are doing some of our own things and we wondered if you'd like to come?"

It was the best thing Sooyoung had heard in days. She knew precisely what Zhixu meant.

"Let us go." She said to him. Perhaps too youthfully, too ungraciously, too foolishly, she picked up the skirts of her hanbok to her thighs and tore across the acres of freshly mowed lawn with Zhixu until they were over a mile away from Longbourne Manor and it's internal grounds and gardens and deep in the forests on the extended lands of the Estate. 

The sight that came before Sooyoung transported her back to her home with her Shaman Father and what was essentially their tribe, their community, their province, back in the Gyreonsang Mountains. A blazing bonfire ripped upwardly into the sky, everyone that looked like herself - dark haired, dark skinned, monolidded - wore their hanfu and hanbok; the smell of cooking food of origins they only knew of flooded into the air, along with paper lanterns rising into the sky, traditional music playing, girls spinning around as they danced, their clothes and hair spinning free like curtains in the wind around them. 

Within a few minutes, Sooyoung found the Koreans of the Oriental gathering, and, soon, she felt she truly was back home in Korea, bashing her hand against a animal skin drum and shouting out chant-like music in Hangul language, dancing with men that looked like those she grew up with and singing with girls that looked like girls she grew up with. 

Nothing could be better.

Nothing could feel better.

Sooyoung blessed the heart of Lord Branwell, who, in thinking taking on these immigrant workers was just an acsess to cheap labour and weighing in on government policy.

That decision of his had created something so profound, and, in the most un-damaging way, had changed this area of Cornwall and the Longbourne Estate for absolute eternity.

Sooyoung and the Korean Shamans began to sing for Lord Branwell, for Suelgi, for all who lived and thrived and survived in this part of the world, on this Estate, in this strange, new world, full of people that did not look like them.

Sooyoung was happy.

So, so, deliriously, dazzlingly happy.

Sweat ran down Sooyoung's back and the back of her knees and her neck. Blood ran down her lips and chin from where her lower lip had split, peeling apart from smiling too much. Sooyoung wiped her hand across the split and smeared blood over her chin and fingertips and chin. Any Englishman, any Christianman, would look at her - look at her people - and think that she was insane, that they were insane. The images of Lord Branwell and Lord Glen flooded her mind, but, more deeper than them, more viscerally than they could ever reach, she saw herself again as a little girl, her Father holding onto her hand as he walked her about their temple in the mountains and held her up as she lit the lanterns to be hung in the forests for the harvest and solstice and equinox festivals...

But, at some point, it all had to come to an end, as everything had to. Some of the other Korean workers took her back to the Longbourne manor in the back of a hay cart that had been cleaned out for her. Sooyoung lay half intoxicated with spirituality and sense of home in the back of the cart as it bumped over the lawns and the roads, the stars shining bright above her, a open universe, a infinite universe, the Mother of all that lived.

"Hello, Goddess Dal-nim, Lady of the Wheel." Sooyoung whispered up to the Goddess of the Moon, the Goddess of the Universe, the Goddess of Fate and of the Tides. "Bless us be, bless us all...this is the best life. The best I could ever hope for...thank you Goddess Dal-nim, Lady of the Wheel...now, if you could just give me Kang Seulgi...things would be so utterly complete..."

When Sooyoung came to her rooms at one 'o' clock in the morning, Sooyoung found a note in beautiful English handwriting left on her pillow. Sooyoung opened and read it after she had washed, clean her teeth and her face, and, was wearing her nightgown and light blue and cream knot-dyed dressing gown instead of her hanbok. As Sooyoung read the note, even though it read her name in English on the front, the internal letter was written in Korean:

If you would care to explain your disgraceful behaviour and choice of words at the game of cricket between Lord Branwell's labourers, staff of the manor, and the villagers, and, then, your affectioniate and utterly inapprioate conduct between yourself and Lord Glen at the ball this evening which you so rudely vanished from, I want you to come to my rooms and do explain to me why I should have you leave straight away

Even though it wasn't signed, Sooyoung knew it was from Seulgi. Sooyoung felt a flare of anger flare up in her.

Have you so far removed yourself from your native that you look at someone who was once your mirror and then spit at them? Sooyoung thought angrily. It became her decision that this was what she would say to Seulgi. Even if Seulgi took dislike to her, it was the choice of Lord Branwell - with the agreement of the staff and managers - of the Estate and it's farms to let her go when there wasn't another person in the world avaible to them to do her job. If this was how it was going to be with Seulgi, then, fine, so shall it be. Sooyoung wasn't apologising; despite what Seulgi thought, Sooyoung had just been talking to Eirwen as she knew him during the rugby game, and, she had not been attempting to seduce Lord Glen, rather telling him that he should divulge his intentions to his likely insecure and blatantly shy wife rather than someone half her age and more than double her beauty and energy.

And I'm not getting dressed and pinning my hair back up again so you can pick a fight, you rotten bitch, Sooyoung thought of Seulgi also, quickly lighting a candle and making her way to Seulgi's rooms on the floor above hers.

Sooyoung's knock on Seulgi's door was more akin to a man's for it's confidence and it's force. Sooyoung scoffed to herself when she heard Seulgi say, "Bottovelli? What is it?"

Sooyoung opened the door to see lighting a candle, disturbed out of sleep. Good, Sooyoung thought bitterly. She held up the letter Seulgi had written her.

"You cunt." Sooyoung told Seulgi before lighting the letter on fire from the flame of her candle and dropping it onto the carpet in Seulgi's bedroom.

Sooyoung was gone as Seulgi started shrieking her lungs out of fright.

Sooyoung didn't sleep very much over the night, but, when she did wake at half-seven the next morning despite her late night and the expense of her energy she had given, she was alert, waiting for either Anna, Mrs. Dalton, or M. Bottovelli to come down and tell her to pack her things to leave Longbourne Manor. But, by eight 'o' clock, no one had appeared, and, Sooyoung knew that she did have to hurry. She should have been ready and fed by now for her work. Now, she would have to rush. She could pin her hair up when she was sitting in the back of a hay-cart or down amongst Eirwen and his boys in orchards, writing out forms and instructions for them, and, none of the workers would care very much if her hair was down when giving them their language lessons.

"MISS PARK!"

Sooyoung fell down the last three stairs of the staircase that led to the Entrance Hall out of fright of a man screaming her name. She fell hardly and it hurt a great deal, but, she had managed not to hit her head. She blinked with teary eyes to see the round and blue-eyed face of Lord Branwell above her.

"My dear, are you quite alright?" Not quite aware mentally of what was going on but, physically, she was. Lord Branwell picked her up as though she was delicate, a tiny child, a being made of glass, and got her into a sitting position on the floor, and adjusted her skirts for her so her legs were covered. 

"Francis, Henry, go and find Mrs. Dalton and Miss. Bae, Lady Kang's maid!" Lord Branwell ordered two of the male servants who had been rolling back the heavy Turkish carpets so the maids Anna and her friend Emily could clean the Entrance Hall floor, and re-polish it. It was why he had screamed out at Sooyoung; she would have slipped in her ballet flats as she rushed across the slippery, tractionless floorboards.

"Oh, goodness me..." Lord Branwell, his back having descended into a worse health since he reached his fifties, could not lift up Sooyoung as he might have done ten years before.

"My Lord, wait, wait..." Anna rushed over, and, with Emily, they shifted the not-quite-concious Sooyoung away directly from the stairs and then into the library where she was put on the sofa closest to the fire. Lord Branwell had never seen such a graceless procedure done in all his life, but, two young maids couldn't be expected to know how to help a unconcious foreigner, all dead weight, first thing in the morning. Mrs. Dalton entered the library, effiecent and brisk and experienced. 

"Miss. Park, can you hear me?" Mrs. Dalton asked, her South-Welsh accent not without a form of care, regarding the young woman on the sofa.

"That cunt of a woman..." Sooyoung groaned, but, thankfully, in her case, she had spoke in Korean, and, Mrs. Dalton had told Joohyun to stay downstairs, she would be gotten if further help was needed with Sooyoung. "Why hasn't anyone came and told me to go home, yet?"

"Oh, yes, she'll be quite fine." Lord Branwell said.

Mrs. Dalton resisted looking at him with the blatant incredulousness she felt. 

"Miss Park?" Anna asked. "Are you hurt?"

Sooyoung sat up, wiping her eyes and running her hands through her hair, gazing blearily up at the group. 

"I'm so sorry to startle you, Miss Park." Lord Branwell told her, as she clearly didn't understand anything around her. "You fell down the stairs because I shouted out for you; you were rushing and Anna and Emily were cleaning the Entrance hall and I didn't want to slip and get hurt, but, you fell on the stairs..."

"Oh, is that all?" Sooyoung stood up. "I...oh, no..."

Lord Branwell half-swore, half-groaned as Sooyoung slumped down in a dead faint, not landing on the sofa, but landing on the hard ground again.

"Oh my Lord, I've killed her!" Lord Branwell clearly paniced.

"Not quite, I don't think, but I do think it would be adviseable to call the Doctor, my Lord." Mrs. Dalton suggested.

Lord Branwell nodded desperately. "I'll get lynched if anything happens to her." He swallowed nervously.

On the fourth floor of Longbourne Manor, Suelgi watched Seungwan and Yerim clean up as best as they could and then hide the scorch mark in the carpet in her bedroom in the reflection of the mirror of her vanity table as Joohyun curled her hair and then pinned it up for her at the back of her head.

"I'm sorry for dropping that candle." Seulgi once again said to Seungwan and Yerim. It was a lie. She couldn't help it. She couldn't forget the look of hostility and anger and venom on Sooyoung's beautiful face, and, how even more beautiful she looked with her hair down in her knot-dyed dressing gown, the flames of the burning letter lighting up her transcendent features and then the lines of her body through her dressing gown as the burning paper floating down to the floor.

"You were very tired, it's no matter." Joohyun told her soothedly, her fingertips stroking soothingly across Seulgi's scalp gently. "It's not the only accident to happen this morning. The new Miss Park fell down the stairs this morning; Lord Branwell called out to her so she wouldn't slip on the newly polished floors and she just fell down the stairs."

"Oh, no." Seulgi's eyes widened. "Oh my goodness, is she alright?"

"Heaven knows." Joohyun answered.

Sooyoung was given the day rested of her duties, in the local village hospital in Kitnor. 

Anna stayed with her in the hospital throughout the morning, and, just after lunchtime when Sooyoung was told she could go back to Longbourne Manor to rest, Eirwen came to visit her with a basket of freshly picked fruit and a worried expression. 

"Would you do a favour for me?" Sooyoung asked Eirwen. Anna had taken the care to put Sooyoung's hair up for her, and, Sooyoung thought Anna had done a much better job of her hair than she usually did. 

"Exchange the apples for berries?" Eirwen looked to the basket of fruit on the bedside table beside her bed in the hospital.

"Oh, do you have some of them?" Sooyoung asked.

"My house is overun by blackberry and raspberry bushes." Eirwen sighed. Anna giggled. Eirwen got a pear out of the basket and gave it to her. "Morning tea as such." He said of the perfect fruit. Anna thanked him. 

"Oh, that sounds lovely, but I meant to ask could you take me down to the shoreline for a few minutes?" 

"Have you not seen the sea, here?"

"Only a brief glimpse when I was with M. Bottovelli and Anna in the carriage coming to the Manor, Eirwen."

"Better take you down then. You'll be a lovely sight for the fisherman fucks."

Sooyoung burst out laughing. "Your head still aching?" Eirwen checked. "The sea air will do you good if that is."

Anna left the two of them be and went into the village to pick up letters and organize parcels that she ended up would have doing for the servants at the Manor house the next day. 

Sooyoung's small, soft hand entwined in Eirwen's rough, large, hairy one as they left the hospital, the basket of fruit beneath his arm and Sooyoung eating a pear she had got out of the basket before-hand. Sooyoung felt happy with Eirwen, safe with Eirwen. Like she did with her dear old Father back in the Gyreongsan Mountains.

It was only a short walk through the pretty village of Kitnor to the shoreline, and, Eirwen still held Sooyoung's hand with her slip-on shoes in his other hand as she held up the skirts of her bankbok and walked her feet and ankles through the sea's-tie lapping up the shoreline. They walked for a quart-mile before turning back, finding Anna in the village, and Eirwen took the two young women home in a small trailer pulled by one of his two horses, saving them have to walk the couple of miles. 

"You smell like the sea, now." Anna told Sooyoung.

"Thank God for those pears." Sooyoung replied. "One of the physicians gave me some sort of medicine and it was disgusting."

Anna burst out laughing.

Later that evening, Sooyoung heard a knock at the door of her rooms. A searing feeling of anxiety twisted Sooyoung's gut again over her actions the previous evening.

"Come in." She said, putting the book she had been reading to one side. Sooyoung couldn't believe her eyes when Suelgi came into her bedroom and sat on the edge of Sooyoung's bed. 

"I heard you were hurt earlier." Seulgi said. 

Sooyoung smiled. "Joy of life." She answered. A flash of humor went across Seulgi's face before she ducked her head, hiding her smile.

"Joy." Seulgi whispered. "That's what I should call you."

"If you like." Sooyoung said. She regarded the other woman.

"I'm sorry about setting your carpet on fire." Sooyoung said. Seulgi smiled, but there was something fragile about it.

"I shouldn't have been so unkind." Seulgi answered.

"I wasn't flirting with Lord Glen, by the way." Sooyoung told her sincerely. Seulgi gazed intently at her. "He came over and asked if I would dance with him, and, I ask him if he had danced with his wife first. When he answered that he hadn't, I told him that he should because she's aware that she is not young and beautiful anymore but that she still loves him the same as she has always done."

Seulgi's gaze fluttered down to where Sooyoung's hands were sitting across one another over the covers over her lap. 

"A letter isn't enough to torch a building this size, anyhow." Seulgi said. 

Sooyoung laughed. Seulgi shifted up the bed a little bit closer to her. Sooyoung's stomach flipped as Seulgi came closer to her. "Are you alright now?" She asked. Sooyoung nodded. The two of them looked at each other directly.

"It's good you're better." Seulgi said before bidding Sooyoung goodnight and leaving her.

Four hours afterwards, Sooyoung tossed and turned. She couldn't sleep. Her mind was a mess, absolutely scattered, all full of thoughts of Seulgi and how she had not lost her employment. How beautiful Seulgi was, and how infinite she made Sooyoung herself feel.

There was no other matter to do about it. Perhaps wrongfully, Sooyoung lit a candle and walked up the stairs to see Seulgi. Wrongul indeed, but, it's strange desire will make foolish people do.

"Seulgi, can I come in and see you?"

Sooyoung didn't hear any form of response. She knocked again on the door of Seulgi's bedroom, and, she hoped that no one else heard her, noticed her.

The candle-light flickered in the candlebra in Sooyoung's grasp. It wasn't going to go out, but, Sooyoung worried she might go out herself.

Sooyoung knocked again on Seulgi's door. The cold was starting to seep through her nightgown into her skin, but, it was no good just tossing and turning sleeplessly in her bed, unable to sleep, all because of the woman behind this door.

"Come in."

The eventual answer was so soft that Sooyoung barely heard it. Sooyoung cracked open the door to Seulgi's private room, and, the entire bedroom was dark. As Sooyoung moved closer, the ember of the gold candle-light illuminated the space in selectively circular pools around Sooyoung's legs and feet, until, the bed-curtains around Seulgi's bed were illuminated, and, then, Seulgi was. She was wearing a oyster-grey silk nightgown, and, Sooyoung's thick cotton nightgown - even though much warmer than Seulgi's in the practical sense - felt shabby and unsophisticated and cheap compared to the way the silk ran like a river, so delicate, over Seulgi's flawless, dark-olive coloured skin. 

"Hello." Sooyoung's eyes caught onto Seulgi's lips as they moved as she spoke. A feeling pooled deep inside of her, and, Sooyoung just hoped that her hair or her eyelashes or the bed curtains didn't catch fire. She didn't want anything to break her eyes away from the sight of Seulgi there in that osyter-grey silk nightgown. "Is everything quite alright?"

Something stuttered inside of Sooyoung. No. She shouldn't be doing this. She should have controlled herself. Not done something which would so blatantly and heavily humiliate her. She should have -

"Come here." Seulgi's index finger on her right hand beckoned slowly and gently in a soft wave to Sooyoung. Sooyoung hesitated. Oh, good God, what has she done? "It's alright, come here." Seulgi chucked her chin ever so slightly. "Good girl..." Sooyoung's heart skipped a beat and her breath left her lungs, not just at the praise, but, now, all her senses were taken away and debilitated by Seulgi crawling across the bed to her, kneeling on the edge, cupping her face in her hands, breath of flushed lips -

Sooyoung's eyes slipt closed as Seulgi kissed her, a warm, firm press of human contact across her lips, and, all of a sudden, her head was overcome with deafening, most beautiful, vibrant aura she could have ever, ever dreamt.

Seulgi pulled back.

"Goodnight, Sooyoung."


	3. TO LET ME DREAM OF YOU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soonyoung goes out horse-riding with Lord Branwell and Seulgi when he gets called away to urgent business at Longbourne Manor leaving Seulgi and Sooyoung to their own devices. Soonyoung has a very hard time keeping self control over Seulgi as they spend time together at Kitnor beach. Their relationship takes a violent turn when Seulgi slaps Sooyoung over been Native Korean Shaman, and, Sooyoung strangles Seulgi. It leaves Seulgi desperate and for Sooyoung, unable to be without the woman who so recently came into her home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for those who read the last note; most of you, my dear readers, behave bertter than that because you are better people than that one cunt I made reference to. It is not a personal attack on you bit rather idiots I deal with everyday at work, then transfer to my hobby. I hope you enjoy this work, and, at the end of the day, I'm Welsh, and we get very fucking angry when pushed

"You should come out riding with myself and Lord Branwell one day this weekend, Miss Park." Seulgi suggested at breakfast. 

"That sounds lovely if you'll have me, my Lord." Sooyoung remarked to Lord Branwell.

"Can you ride a horse, Miss Park?" Lord Branwell asked.

"And you've never looked a tiger in the eye?" Sooyoung answered.

"I beg your pardon?" Lord Branwell said to her.

Sooyoung felt M. Bottovelli's gaze deep on the back of her head.

"She's saying she can ride a horse like myself and you can and that you've never looked a tiger in the eye like she has." Seulgi explained.

"Good God, when did you do that, Miss Park?" Lord Branwell asked.

"We raise tigers, along with other animals. Bears, wolves, big cats, tiger which is one." Sooyoung answered. "My Father and I. They live in the forests around our temples, they guard our temples, they live with us and us with they. We raise orphan ones as well. Every part of Asia is interconnected some way. The tigers we have in Korea come from China, as do our bears, and the wolves we have come from Russia to Mongolia to Korea." Sooyoung smiled. "One with nature."

"What is the behaviour of a tiger?" Lord Branwell asked, clearly interested. Seulgi smiled into her cup of tea as she drunk. Even M. Bottovelli waiting by the other side of the room looked quite interested. Never before had they entertained a woman with knowledge of tigers before.

"Deadly." Sooyoung answered, and, her gaze slipt from Lord Branwell to Seulgi's dark eyes directly. "Vicious. Strong." She exhaled a breath. "Loving." She looked back to Lord Branwell. "Do you know the first thing a tiger does when her babies are born?"

Lord Branwell shook his head.

"She lets out a cry to the whole world, telling them she's a Mama-tiger now." Sooyoung smiled. "And then my Father would go to visit them down in our garden." 

"What a tremendous way to grow up." Lord Branwell chuckled.

"Quite." Seulgi gazed at Sooyoung over the rim of her tea-cup, drinking again.

Today, Sooyoung taught English/Korean, English/Mandarin lessons to the children of the Oriental workers inside Longbourne Manor in the drawing room. When Lord Branwell came in at one point to find his black shag pipe tobacco, Sooyoung wondered if he found it a bit bemusing to see his library full of monolidded children repeating phrases that they would use in day to day life. 

Lord Branwell laughed aloud as the children said in a chorus, "I know you have overcharged me, here is the recepit, give me my money back, sir." 

"Dear me..." He muttered to himself sweet-naturedly as he left the library. "Our girl supports the Worker's Unions...and she's in my library..."

Sooyoung found herself quickly endeared to the children, and, in some matters, found them much more co-operative than their parents, a couple of which would miss her lessons. Well, they wouldn't learn English then, would they? Have their little ones teach them.

Soon, Sooyoung had been at Longbourne Manor for one week. It was on the seventh day that it decided that Sooyoung would spend her morning horse-riding with Seulgi and Lord Branwell.

Sooyoung was beyond enamoured with the sight of Seulgi. She rode a black mare, and, she wore a cream-silver dress of the English manner, an identical make to her black dress, with a straw hat that had a voile head-covering over it, falling down like a veil over her been. Seulgi had a handsome embroidered shawl in the Russian style around her elbows and lower back, and, Sooyoung rode beside Seulgi with Lord Branwell on the other side. Sooyoung was delighted that Lord Branwell wasn't in the centre, obstructing her oppotunites to be able to look at Seulgi. Sooyoung's own white mare behaved herself, and, Seulgi had earlier joked that the mare took so well to Sooyoung because she must have thought she was pretty. Sooyoung had caused a bit of a stir that morning. She had worn a dress that was neither hanfu nor English. It was a dress that had once belonged to Eirwen's Welsh Pagan wife, and, as a consequnce, it was a straight, ankle-length dress made of dyed cotton with long sleeves and a boat neck. In the book of Christian Victorian English-people, she was scarcely wearing more than a petticoat, and was a sharp contrast beside Seulgi, the epitome of societal expectation of honourable, dutiful, respectable women.

But, Sooyoung was there to teach English, assist the workers, and, underlyingly, be a form of companion to Seulgi.

It didn't matter if she wore the clothes of the former Mrs. Eirwen Jones, her hanbok from Korea, or, the corseted, hooped monstrosties of Victorian England. 

Only the day before Eirwen had invited Sooyoung to have dinner with him at his house, and, Sooyoung knew that would have put Seulgi's nose out of joint and would have bemused Lord Branwell, but, then again, a man of his age and experience of life should know better of the personalities of women to know that Sooyoung wasn't having a illicit relationship with Eirwen. Sooyoung had found out that Eirwen's now grown son worked in Liverpool as a banker, and, had done very well or himself been only twenty-two years old.

Eirwen had given her a tour of his large, sandstone cottage built seperately from the Longbourne Estate on land he had bought from Lord Branwell, the house he having had built himself from scratch. 

"Now I'm getting ideas for when I have my own house." Sooyoung had laughed with Eirwen, pointing out little things around his house she liked; the carvings of Welsh Gods he had made into the exposed beams in the home, all made from beautiful old oak and acorn; the Green Man, The Spring Queen, The Goddess of the Moon and the Stars, Gwynn Ap Nudd of the Wild Hunt, a real authoritarian army of the old Welsh kingdoms ruled by Triads and Talisen Warriors related to the royal families, enslaving the worst humans alive on their lands - rapists, murderers, abusers of women and children - and keeping them in a life that they could never stray from unless they wanted to die, keeping them in a life where they could not hurt anyone else as they had already done.

"One day I'll carve you some Korean Gods." Eirwen offered. That day was one of the days where Sooyoung had worn one of her corseted and hooped English dresses.

She had gotten stuck in a doorway. 

Eirwen had nearly killed himself laughing, and, he had told her, "I don't intend to be strange, but, if you want some other comfortable things other than English dress or your Korean dresses, my wife was about your size once upon a time. I have some of her dresses if you would like to look? They're nearly all brand new, she never got much wear out of them before she left me."

And, so, Sooyoung now had quite a diverse wardrobe. They rode for ten miles around the cliffs looking over the Cornish sea to South Welsh coastline, and, through the forests and the extended fields full of wildflowers, talking on and off all the while about different things. Since Sooyoung's mention of tigers that morning, Lord Branwell was very interested in Sooyoung's early life.

"We had one cub that we hand-raised; and when he was a very small cub he used to come into our home and urinate under one of our dressers, well, what would be a dresser in this country." Sooyoung told him, having talked about tigers for a whole mile of riding. Seulgi chuckled softly while Lord Branwell laughed boisterously. "I think he has the softest fur on any tiger, that cub. He's five years old now, a big male, but, he's always my Father's little boy."

"You don't have any brother's or sisters?" Seulgi asked Sooyoung.

"No." Sooyoung answered. "My Mother swore birthing one child was plenty enough."

Seulgi laughed.

"I sometimes think my Father would have liked a son, someone to carry down the name, a little one to do boy things with." Sooyoung smiled tenderly. "So, instead, he has a daughter that's inclined to be quite wild."

"I can't imagine you been very wild, Miss Park." Lord Branwell paid as a compliment to her.

Seulgi gazed directly at Sooyoung, something warm and flirtatious in her gaze, something saying so blatantly, "I know better."

The sunlight fell warm and fresh down onto Sooyoung's skin, and, she wondered why everyone told her it was always cold and raining in England.

The weather was perfect.

"My Lord!" Was shouted out as they cross through a field. One of the Japanese workers Sooyoung had been teaching English rushed over, holding the skirts of his Yukata up in one of his hands, a letter held above his head in the other. His loose black hair blew around his face as he ran, and, finally, he reached Lord Branwell and Seulgi and Sooyoung, huffing and puffing.

He bowed to Seulgi and Sooyoung, before, explaining to Lord Branwell that the family Solicitor and his Mother were at Longbourne Manor and needed him for a meeting, Lord Glen was always at the Manor in a fretful state, and, two of Lord Branwell's acquaitences from London had sent him telegrams, both in the envelope. "Quite serious, sir." The worker stood back to gain his breath after he finished explaining to Lord Branwell the situation in perfect English.

"You did a very good job." Sooyoung praised the worker, who, bowed to her again before leaving them in peace.

"Oh, dear, this is rather serious." Lord Branwell obviously didn't know who to do about his female company.

"You go home and organize things with your mother and the solicitor, and I'll make my own way back with Miss. Park." Seulgi decided for him. "We'll be perfectly fine by ourselves; should anyone try and hurt us Miss Park is the daughter of a Shaman, trust in me, we shall be quite alright."

With a jolly smile but worried eyes, Lord Branwell left them, and, Sooyoung and Seulgi continued their ride.

"Would you like to go down to the sea?" Seulgi asked Sooyoung. "I've not been to the sea for a very long time."

Sooyoung and Seulgi rode their horses back in the opposite direction to Kitnor, and, they tied them up to a huge acorn tree which provided plenty of shade and had a trough full of fresh water and no dung from horses stood to wait there previously.

Seulgi and Sooyoung sat on the sand before the towering limbs of a Slavic pine tree which grew further down the beach where land simply started to become sand bank and then sea. 

Sooyoung sat with her legs stretched and her back propper up against the risen limbs of the Slavic Pine tree while Seulgi sat only a foot or two away, on her knees with with her calves to her side. Her gloved-hands were intertwined together in her lap, and she gazed out at the ocean, looking through veil while Sooyoung looked at her. "Won't you raise your veil up?" Sooyoung asked. Seulgi's head turned to the side, gazing at her instead of the sea.

Yes, look at me, Sooyoung thought. I'm more beautiful than an English sea. I deserve you more than a English sea.

Sooyoung watched as Seulgi gathered the hem of her veil around the lap of her dress and brought it up over her face, draping the voile over her hat. 

"Is this a better sight?" Seulgi remarked to her.

"Yes." Sooyoung answered sincerely. She waited a few moments, pondering the words she could use to further the outward expression of her sincerity to Seulgi. "I could look at you all day."

Seulgi averted her eyes to the sandy grown beneath them, but, she didn't lower her veil back down. 

"Why are you wearing hardly anything?" She asked.

"Well, I'm all covered in the sense of modesty." Sooyoung replied. She wasn't going to allow Seulgi to attack her.

"Have you done this on purpose?" Seulgi said.

"How do you mean?" Sooyoung raised an eyebrow. It affronted Seulgi.

"Your clothes...your body...your appearence?" Seulgi pointed a gloved-hand finger at her.

"No, not entirely." Sooyoung knew Seulgi was thinking Sooyoung was dressing, in Seulgi's mind, in lesser things to give the further impression of desire, but, Sooyoung thought of Seulgi, If you really knew me you would know that I don't do things like that, especially not the position I am in. "These were the clothes of one of the workers I'm on good terms; they belonged to his wife who left him at least twenty years ago. He asked me if I would like to have them so they didn't just rot in the wardrobe in his beautiful house." Sooyoung got up from sitting on the sand, and, Seulgi's eyes watched her as she lifted her dress around her knees and walked down the shoreline to the ocean.

"Miss Park, what are you doing?" Seulgi asked, left alone, left looking at a young woman who she technically had no control over. Seulgi didn't like it. She scrambled up on her knees on the sand as Sooyoung dropped the skirts of her dress and then dived into the waves. Seulgi couldn't see Sooyoung anymore, and, it riled her. "Miss Park!"

Sooyoung came back to the surface, waist-deep in the crystalline blue sea-waters, and...she danced.

Sooyoung's eyes widened. She hadn't seen that for years.

She had no desire to see it.

"Miss Park, come out of the water!" She shouted, her heart racing out of fear as the words on Shaman ritual began to spill from Sooyoung's lips. Sooyoung's arms moved through the air as her body swayed and moved in a rythm that Seulgi didn't want to remember, didn't want to know of in a life as hers anymore; her hands went through her wet hair and it was too much, too much for Seulgi to cope with.

"SOOYOUNG!" Seulgi screamed, before, falling into a dead faint on the shoreline ground. 

Sooyoung dived beneath the waves, and she swam for as long as she pleased. When she came out of the water roughly an hour later and her heart beating fast from her exercises, she looked unimpressedly at the sight of the still unconcious Seulgi.

"I thought you were better than that." Sooyoung remarked, her hands on her hips. Disappointment flooded through her being at Seulgi's behaviour; how could such a beautiful person carry on so hysterically? Sooyoung knelt down on the sand beside Seulgi, her wet clothes sticking to her body like a second skin. Oh, well. She'd dry out in the warm sunshine. Sooyoung rolled Seulgi onto her back and wondered if she should go find Eirwen and ask him what to do. She remembered the North-Welshman saying about Seulgi's previous illness, and, Sooyoung wondered if weak nerves were something to do with it.

"Seulgi, wake up." Sooyoung said down to her. For good measure, she pinched the flesh of Seulgi's arm. Seulgi remained unconcious, un-stirred by her efforts. "Right, it will be the Pagan method then." Sooyoung sighed. She covered Seulgi's nose and mouth tightly with both of her hands, suffocating her, and, a couple of seconds later, Seulgi's body gave a single, violent jerk, like that of a seizure, and she gasped, her eyes opening wide, coming back to conciousness.

She turned around to growl at Sooyoung, but, Sooyoung didn't get her the chance. "Why did you get so sick that it was only Eirwen Jones who could look after you?" She asked.

Seulgi slapped her across the face, and, anger flooded Sooyoung's being. Seulgi gazed at her with a ignorant authority that came with her now aristocratic status, but, her face fell to utter terror as Sooyoung smiled at her like a snake, acting so insanity filled her eyes.

"Babo..." She whispered before hissing, her eyes wide and manic, her tone a shrieked laugh and attacking tone. Babo, the Korean word for Fool. "Run, babo." Sooyoung warned before shrieking out the cry of the hunt like an animal. Well, did Seulgi run. Sooyoung thought she looked ridiculous, trying to run in her English clothes with her beautiful Korean face.

All because of your face, Sooyoung thought, allowing Seulgi to run as far as she could before easily catching up the the Lady Dowager. You're pretty, pretty face.

Sooyoung launched at Seulgi, jumping onto her back and wrapping her hands around her neck. Sooyoung strangled her, pushing Seulgi's face into the sand, suffocating her, kneeling on her back, her knees either side of Seulgi's spine, where her lungs were. After several long drawn out moments where Seulgi's body stopped fighting as just shivered, Seulgi beginning to die, Sooyoung got of her and laid down on the sand beside her, grim and cold and silent. 

Seulgi slowly got to her knees, her calves and feet to the side, like that of the genie's in story-books for children, like she had been sitting earlier. Her face was streaked with blood and tears and spit, sand stuck all of her features, and, sand fell out of her body, stuck across her teeth and in the grooves, rubbing her gums and teeth raw, making her mouth bleed. Seulgi weakly sobbed, abused and traumatised.

"Don't you ever fucking do that to me, again." Sooyoung told her darkly. She sat up and wrapped her arms around Seulgi's shivering, assault being, resting the side of her head on the top of Seulgi's matted, dirty hair, her hat and veil having been lost as she had ran. Seulgi spied it a couple of meters up the sand. Sooyoung sucked her lower lip into her mouth and bit on it for a few moments, before releasing it, blood-flush and hot.

"Kiss me." Sooyoung said into Seulgi's hair, her lips moving against Seulgi's scalp. Seulgi shuddered, frightened, and, she weakly gasped as Sooyoung's hands grasped around her neck again, forcing her face to look up at her. Sooyoung's hand slid around to hold the side's of Seulgi's face, her hands intertwining in Seulgi's now loose and disarrayed hair, and pressed her mouth hardly over Seulgi's, erasing her, erasing Seulgi, erasing everything that had happened.

Sooyoung slipped her tongue into Seulgi's mouth, her tongue feeling Seulgi's mutilated gums and the blood in her mouth, imagining in her mind the bruises that were going to form around Seulgi's neck but would be hidden by those English dresses of hers...

One of Seulgi's hands slid into Sooyoung's drying hair, going voliminous and curled from it's wash in the sea-water full of salt, keeping her close as Sooyoung went to pull away to let Seulgi breathe.

"No, no, don't..." Seulgi gripped Sooyoung's body to her, not letting her move away the smallest fraction. "Don't leave me..."

Sooyoung pulled her dress off over her head, and, she pressed it gently over Seulgi's face, getting rid of the spit and the tears and the blood and the sand. Sooyoung bundled it up under one arm, and, she lifted Seulgi to stand with her, but, kept them in a tight embrace, their foreheads and noses touching. With Sooyoung's hands at the small of Seulgi's back, Seulgi's hands were pressed to Sooyoung's chest, above her breasts. 

"Don't look. Don't try and figure it out. You don't have to." Sooyoung said of her nudity. "Don't think. It's alright." They walked back up the beach together, Sooyoung's arm around Seulgi's shoulders, and, Seulgi's arms wrapped around Sooyoung's waist, her head in the crook of Sooyoung's shoulder and neck. 

They rode back to the manor, Seulgi riding beside Sooyoung. Sooyoung's dress was back on her body, and, even though she would change into a nearly identical one so Lord Branwell wouldn't get quited startled, she wasn't sure if she could let that one be washed, be seen by Anna and Emily and the other maids in the laundry. The blood stains were too curious; they couldn't be put down to early menstruation or a fall of some sort where she had bleeding grazes. Sooyoung would have to tuck and hide the dress away somewhere, somewhere she only knew off.

Seulgi took one of her hands off of the horses reins and held it out to Sooyoung. Sooyoung reached out and entwined her hand with Seulgi's, the two of them close enough on their mares.

"We'll go in the back way." Sooyoung said to Seulgi. "You wait over by the Acorn trees like you are admiring them and I'll take the horses around to Tanner at the stables. We'll go inside via the laundry and the second servants staircase up to the main house."

Seulgi nodded, agreeing to the decision that Sooyoung had planned.

Fifteen minutes later, they were in Seulgi's rooms. Seulgi was urgent, rushed, frazzled, clinging onto Sooyoung, not wanting to let her out of her sight. Sooyoung did her best to calm Seulgi down, sitting her on her bed and touching her head and talking to her. "I can't stay long now, I've got lessons with the workers to do at twelve 'o clock and it's half-eleven now." Sooyoung explained to her. "Lord Branwell won't come up to see you, I say it's quite a serious matter downstairs. I think his Mother is making alterations to her will and therefore the recipients of her monies; it's what it seems like. When I come home here I can stay with you all night."

"No, no, no, don't leave me, don't go." Seulgi begged, clutching at Sooyoung, frightened and desperate.

"Would you come with me, then?" Sooyoung asked, controlled and reasonably in Seulgi's sudden hysteria. "Come with me down to the fields where we do the lessons? You don't have to be sitting out in the sun; you can sit up in the carts in the orchards where's there's shade, and, there's nobody down there that means any harm."

Something even more disturbed came over Seulgi's features.

"What's that matter with you about Eirwen Jones?" Sooyoung asked.

"The man is a heathen." Seulgi's eyes shone with tears and one of her hands in her lap trembled.

"And?" Sooyoung's mouth and nose touched against Seulgi's temple, stroking some o her hair back from her face.

"What do you mean "and"?" Seulgi looked at her, her state getting worse.

"Listen to me...please don't be frightened and out of way like this." Sooyoung ran her thumbs over the undersides of Seulgi's wrists, crouching down in front of her where she sat on the edge of her bed. "Trust in me."

"Could - could you..." Seulgi's eyes ran over in-direct parts of Sooyoung's body, her neck, her shoulder, her chin, her cheekbone, her hair either side of her neck.

"Hey." Sooyoung gently pressed one of Seulgi's hands to her face, leaning into the touch of her hand. "What do you want me to do?"

"Take your clothes off." Seulgi said, something slightly more concrete in her tone, perhaps in wake of Sooyoung's consent to anything that she needs, anything that she desires.

"Alright." Sooyoung said.


	4. I NEVER DREAMED THAT I'D LOVE SOMEBODY LIKE YOU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will update very shortly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will update very shortly

Will update very shortly


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